Special issue on union leadership

Citation

(2009), "Special issue on union leadership", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 30 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2009.02230faa.001

Special issue on union leadership

Article Type: Call for papers From: Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Volume 30, Issue 6

There has been a rapidly growing literature - as the papers in LODJ amply demonstrate - on the nature and consequences of leadership in many contexts. Managerial leadership in the private, public, and voluntary sectors is now widely studied. We know a lot about leadership in other organizational contexts, for example, political and Church leaders. However, our knowledge of trade union leadership is much more limited and few leadership scholars have conducted studies in trade unions. Equally, union leadership was once a popular topic of research by Industrial Relations specialists, but now appears to have fallen rather out of fashion.

Thus the effect of union leadership style on union members has been neglected in the literature. The main focus of the limited range of studies has been on the democratic nature of leadership decision making. Here the link between membership participation and democratic leadership style is relatively well established. Similarly, a few studies have examined ``union barriers'', defined as the actions taken by union leaders that result in members feeling discouraged from participating (e.g. centralized decision making, gender-biased appointment processes of leaders) and found that these reduced member participation in union activities and members' commitment to their unions.

A range of measures of union leadership have been employed in the literature examining decision making, transformational leadership, militancy-moderation orientations etc. Thus, although union leadership appears to be a potentially fruitful line of research, it is also an area that clearly needs some consolidation, not least in the development of psychometrically adequate measures of union leadership behaviour and developments in the testing of leadership-outcomes relationships found in other contexts. Hence this special issue.

Articles are invited which address this gap. Papers can be of a theoretical or empirical nature, or investigate practical concerns. They can be drawn from any research tradition; contributions of both a quantitative and a qualitative nature are invited. Papers offering comparative international perspectives will be particularly welcome. Topics could include but are not restricted to:

• •

  Why do union members volunteer for union leadership positions?

• •

  How can unions retain their lay union leaders?

• •

  What are the different styles of union leadership?

• •

  How can union leaders be developed and supported?

• •

  What are the consequences of union leadership - for example, in terms of member commitment and participation in unions?

• •

  Under what conditions does union leadership have its greatest impact? For example, what impact is the economic recession having on union leaders?

Enquiries, expressions of interest and submission of abstracts (500 words maximum) should be sent to the Guest Editor shown at the address below. Abstracts should arrive by 1 October 2009. Completed articles of between 6,000-8,000 words should be submitted by 31 January 2010 at the latest for review. Articles will be blind reviewed. The issue will be published at the start of 2011.

Guest EditorProfessor Tom Redman, Durham Business School,Durham University, Durham City, County Durham, UK DH1 3LBE-mail: Tom.Redman@durham.ac.uk